Picture a world in which you exist only as a digital avatar. Your home is designed with waterfall walls rather than oak. The exterior is surrounded by flames rather than lush green landscape. As for your property's location, please consider the most remote part of the globe, where neither the laws of physics and geography nor permits and budgets exist. It's hard to envision, right?
Enter tech's new obsession: the metaverse. A term coined by the writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, it refers to a place where virtual, augmented, and physical realities collide in a fully digital world. It goes beyond non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies and crosses into gaming. If you've ever created a house in Animal Crossing or the Sims, then you've experienced interior design in the metaverse at its most basic level.
"The metaverse offers a sense of 'familiarity' with the physical world but challenges scale, materiality, physics, and function," says architect Luis Fernandez, whose MetaEstates Gallery project put a focus on displaying art in surreal natural settings, juxtaposing elements that don't coexist in the real world. Tiffany Howell, the interior designer behind Night Palm studio in Los Angeles, adds: "You can build spaces that would otherwise be architecturally impossible in locations that one could only dream of it's an opportunity to bring dreamscapes to life."
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MORE, PLEASE
Eric Hughes joins forces with Standard Architecture to transform two neighboring homes into a sprawling family compound.
SIZED TO FIT
Designer Nannette Brown reimagines a new-build apartment with unexpected depth, character, and texture.
Play It Cool
In balmy Texas, Ashe Leandro brings urbane style and a chill vibe to a home in a historic district.
Mic Drop
For former talk radio star Tom Joyner, Studio Roda creates an oceanfront pleasure pad with out-of-sight views and disco-era glamour.
EYE IN THE SKY
How do you cozy up a Manhattan high-rise? Call designers Hendricks Churchill.
THE JOY OF KØKKEN
In Brooklyn, a writer transforms her kitchen into a space of warmth and connection, blending personal memories with Scandinavian design.
CURTAIN RAISER
ELLE DECOR partners with designers Christine and John Gachot to refresh an iconic lounge at a New York institution, the Metropolitan Opera House.
The Empire Strikes Back - A 19th-century gem in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gets a tour-de-force restoration thanks to Frances Merrill of Reath Design.
Is it possible to simultaneously go back in time and leap forward? This was the challenge a couple set for themselves upon purchasing a salmon-pink 1869 house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from Longfellow House, the National Historic Site that served as George Washington's headquarters during the revolution. We loved all the beautiful old details of this house, the homeowner says.
Just Like That, But Cheaper. -One writer tried to replicate a classic ELLE DECOR interior in his apartment. Could he do it for $500?
It was all about the green curtains. In 2008, to my great surprise, I was offered a ninemonth fellowship based in New York City. I had lived there twice before, both times unsuccessfully, meaning I had failed to create any kind of significant social life, and so this was a chance not only to do research for my new novel, but also an opportunity to get things right. I swore I wouldn't let the city break me a third time.
And How! - Decorator Nick Olsen transforms a Sag Harbor home into a Hamptons retreat with an irreverent humor.
If you must go to the Hamptons, however-because it is devilishly good fun, after all-you may notice an apparently modest, low-slung cottage on Sag Harbor's Main Street and think, with a comfortable sort of feeling, Now that is how a house should look. Nestled amid the Botox bars, helipads, and club-staurants, it could almost set the sordid world aright both a rebuke and a solution to the chaos that surrounds it. A real home.
